The recent development of low loss high quality fiber optic cable greatly enlarges the feasibility of many optical systems employed for communication data processing and other types of signal transmission.
Some of the advantages of fiber optic cables used in such systems include their greatly reduced size, weight, and cost, as well as, reduced constraints related to impedance matching and the comparitively easy coupling to common logic circuitry by the use of various light sources and light detectors. Additionally, fiber optic cables permit high channel-to-channel isolation, easy changeability with electrical cable, and greatly reduced electromagnetic interference.
One of the principal advantages of fiber optic cables in military use is their virtue immunity to radio frequency signals and their characteristic containment of transmitted signals wholly within the cables. In ground communication systems, this greatly increases transmission security as well as eliminating cross-talk.
In all such optical systems employing fiber optic cable, there is a need for fiber optic cable terminals which, when connected, are capable of intercepting and extracting signal information from an optical path as well as introducing additional signal information into the optical path.
Characteristically, such terminal ends of fiber optic cable will transmit light energy signals at the terminal end with greatest efficiency when the terminal end itself is optically flat. In the case of multi-filament fiber optic cables, a number of different methods have been employed for bonding the fiber optic cable end together and then grinding and polishing the fiber optic terminal end substantially optically flat.
However, the more conventional grinding and polishing techniques are not ideally adapted to single filament fiber optic cable and inherently entail the further disadvantage of the probability of some degree of contamination by lossy residues left from the grinding and polishing operation.
It has been observed that glass fibers, particularly of the single filament fiber optic cable type, can be made to break with flat and perpendicular end surfaces. In addition to being faster and simpler, the breaking technique has the added advantage of producing clean, uncontaminated end surfaces.
Accordingly, there is a need for a hand-held, manually operative tool for parting single filament fiber optic cable at a determinable location by employing the breaking technique.